Author

I'm 78, I'm on my pension in Ireland, and all that good stuff.

That's such a thrill - a story I wrote at the beginning of my career, and it's still packin' the house.

I do outlines when I'm writing with someone, but they also need to have a certain amount of freedom.

Writing has been so much a part of my life that I'm really quite annoyed that I can't do as much as I used to.

I think the Internet, particularly the availability of information, is great. I do a lot of correspondence on-line and have a chat line to talk to my fans as well.

I have a shelf of comfort books, which I read when the world closes in on me or something untoward happens.

I have written my own screen version of Pern, but had no buyers yet.

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel.

Mostly I'm telling people that they don't have to be victims.

I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.

I have my good days and my bad days, but I don't have as much energy as I used to back when I was young and foolish and didn't count the cost - and it takes a lot - to write.

I didn't raise Todd to be a writer, but he happened to be one anyway.

Because we build the worlds we wouldn't mind living in. They contain scary things, problems, but also a sense of rightness that makes them alive and makes us want to live there.

What I used to do between writing fits was feed my kids, ride my horse and go shopping for cat and dog food.

I did not have a chance to write novels until my youngest child started school fulltime.

People have freaked out when I tell them that my dragons are scientifically based... what else can you call a genetically engineered life form?

But I will say that living in Ireland has changed the cadence and fullness of speech, since the Irish love words and use as many of them in a sentence as possible.

I don't often reread my own books, unless I am going into another in the series and need to refresh my mood when originating the concept.

Make no judgements where you have no compassion.

That's what writing is all about, after all, making others see what you have put down on the page and believing that it does, or could, exist and you want to go there.